We Love Our Gorebulbs!
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 04.11.08
That's what conservative pundit Michelle Malkin calls compact fluorescents, as her website writes about Minnesota Representative Michelle Bachman and her "Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act", filed appropriately in her "Enviro-nitwit" category. Although we cannot find a link to TreeHugger in it, we are getting a lot of traffic and comments, so we provide herein some background and welcome our visitors.
Lots of people mention the mercury in CFLs (without acknowledging how much is put out by coal fired power plants); Our Harvard professor Helen Suh Mackintosh answers the question Is Mercury from a Broken CFL Dangerous? and we show you how to clean it up, and debunk the Hazmat cleanup urban myth. For those who complain about the quality of light from them, you might just have the wrong kind; here is a comparison. Lighting designers are doing some great things with them, and you can even recycle them easily now; here is how it is done.
Oh, and here is an update: Sylvania just introduced a new CFL with only 1.5 milligrams of mercury. The 4 or 5 milligrams in a conventional CFL are barely the size of the nib of a ballpoint pen, so 1.5 milligrams is probably not even visible, let alone a major hazard. ::CNET
michelle maglalang malkin is a cow who wants to be a white man.
"Enviro Nitwit" indeed...just ridiculous. I gotta say though, as the prices come down, it's going to be all LEDs all the time methinks...
EarthLED just came out with a new bulb that's a 13W LED and puts out 900 lumens (akin to a 75 W incandescent) over 50,000 hours (I suppose that number is still hypothetical)
Exciting times!
You guys are all getting your panties in a bunch because Michelle Malkin wears makeup unlike your hippie chick girlfriends, and has a good point.
I ran out and bought CFL replacements for my whole house in the spirit of unbridled tree-huggery, from Home Depot (which I thought was a respectable retailer).
The CFLs are crap. They start our like a 40W bulb, but after about 5 minutes are as bright as a 120W bulb. What's up with that. Sure there are good CFLs out there, but don't you think they should have made sure most of those Americans were going to spend their hard earned $ for met some minimum specifications for quality? At least before making them mandatory?
See, that's why governing by mandates never work. This whole plan has been a disaster. I can only hope the next CFLs I buy will serendipitously be from a good batch.
I hate fluorescent bulbs and also hate Al Gore. I already tried some in my house and office [both compact and trandicional] and hate it. The light color depress me, makes me quit that enviroment sooner as possible. I sitill prefer tradicional incandescent/halogen bulbs. They are much less efficient but makes me produce much more than flourescent bulbs.
Now you thing: "Why this guy is still here? He just isn't green enough. "
I not 100% green I replace my car for a bike for many activities and when I REALLY need the car, I use ethanol on it [I'm brazilian]. I almost never use AC or heating [only in some extreme cases like a 40°C day] and recycle my garbage. I forget to say 100% of mu energy comes from hydroelectric plants [maybe from Itaipu], it isn't the cleanest energy but still much better than coal...
Hippie chick girlfriends are cool. They're pretty smart and they don't aspire to shed themselves of their shameful genetic heritage.
And try to look at the bigger picture. We need to save energy. I suspect you know this, or you wouldn't be browsing this site.
And you should try to look at the label before buying your bulbs. They require less energy, so a 26 watt CFL will be as bright as a 100 watt incandescent. That might have been your problem. Also, they take about a minute to warm up to their full brightness. I suppose your confusion is understandable...?
I bought some Meijer brand (supermarket) CFLs and the color is almost exactly the same as incandescents. My roommates couldn't tell the difference, and they usually complain about the blue output of the other CFLs in the house.
When you turn them on, it takes about 1 to 2 minutes for them to come up to their full brightness. It's not a quality issue, that's just how fluorescent lights work. Why does that bother you so much, Dave? Are you constantly turning your lights on and off? Unlike incandescents, you do not need to turn off CFLs every time you leave the room.
I actually read somewhere that CFLs last longer if you leave them on for a few extra minutes before turning them off, as it wears them out sooner if you turn them on and off too often...